"Advice is always very easily given and very difficult to take."

As
Emily expressed in her post about Stefan Sagmeisters “Touch Someone’s Heart
with Design” Sagmeister posed a challenge to the RIT student body, and that was
to touch someone’s heart with design. Sagmeister’s challenge went with his
presentation here at RIT about “Design and Happiness.”

Sagmeister
is the newest winner of The Lucky
Strike Designer Award -The Lucky Strike Designer Award is one of the most
prestigious international design awards. It is presented to one recipient each
year in recognition of either his or her lifetime achievements, or career of an
individual whose work in design has helped improve the social and cultural
conditions of everyday life. He is also a Grammy Award Winner.

I went to his presentation, unfortunately I
did not take part in his challenge but I was an onlooker experiencing the
projects across campus. At first I saw this sign that said “If sorry is not
enough then I hope this is.” It was probably 8 bed sheets stapled together that
had this quote written on it hanging from the SAU roof. Then there was Or there
was the “keep your chin up” written in red solocups on the baseball field fence, this one I know touched someone’s
heart. As my roommate came home last night having a horrible day, from losing
her keys, to having her washing machine not unlock, to not getting an A on her
test and so on. But as she was leaving campus she saw that sign and it put that
much needed smile on her face, she lifted her chin up because of some random
student touching her heart. He or she probably doesn’t even know that his small
steps touched her heart.

Sagmeister spoke about Happiness in Design in
the world. You can not be unhappy and try to portray happiness, if you are not
happy then your “happy go lucky work isn’t going to be happy” Sagmeister
strives for design that touches the heart.

Sagmeister
has the idea that your life consists of 25 years of just learning, then 40
years of working life, then you get 15 years to retire. So no breaks, no changes,
no experiences. So Sagmeister decided that every 7 years he would take a year
from his retirement quota and go on sabbatical. This was the message on the firms’
answering machine “Hello. We are conducting a full year of experiments and will
return September 9th, 2009 please call us then.” So his firms a well
know NYC firm was not doing work for any clients but themselves for a full
year. When Sagmeister went on his sabbatical this past year he went to Bali. He
said he was inspired, he was calmed, he was even surrounded by 99 dogs, the
inspiration for his newest works, including his furniture design, which he will
not go back to but he tried! Sagmeister said that Bali is so slow and calm and
he could mediate whenever he wanted, but coming back to NYC he finds it so hard
to release all of his energy, so it’s more important than ever to mediate. And
I think now a-days where you can lock yourself in a room and live for ever it
is even more important to get out and see what is going on in your work, in the
world so that you don’t have the exact same work day in day out and it gets so
mundane

At
the end of his presentation was Question and Answer session, the question that
is never missed was, what advice do you have for us designer in and out of
school? He responded with saying after a long drawn out pause, I don’t really
know what to tell you but "Advice is always very easily given and very
difficult to take." But he does stress the importance of hard work and
being well rounded. He said that what works for you doesn’t work for me, and
vice-a-versa.

So with this I tell you that in your college search process nad the
rest of your life, you will be picking up, hearing, and taking in so much
advice, and it is up to you guys to see where you want to take it.

The busy season is fastly approaching, so Best of Luck in all your
college application adventures! Don’t forget we have a twitter, facebook pages,
and everyone else’s blogs to help you through the process. (Hopefully I will
actually be weekly blogging, it’s only week 5 J)